Charles Sanders

Charles Sanders

October 15, 1842 - November 12, 1918

Burial lot 1615, Grave 5, Halidon Ave.

Civil war veteran, helped launch Alexander Graham Bell’s new invention, owner of World Record setting trotter Uhlan.

Charles Sanders was born in Salem on October 15^th in 1842, the son of George Thomas Sanders and Mary Anne Brown. He had one sibling, an older brother Thomas, who was born in 1839. Charles served in the Civil War at a 1^st lieutenant with Company E of the 48^th Massachusetts Infantry. After the war in 1870, he married Helen Augusta Lord, with whom he had 5 children: Arthur, William, Katharine, Thomas, and Richard.

Charles’ brother, Thomas, married in 1866, and a year later had a son named George Thomas, who was born deaf. When “Georgie,” as he was known, was 5 years old and unable to speak, Thomas learned of a Boston professor of vocal physiology who had established a school after developing a technique forteaching speech to deaf children, and brought Georgie to him for private lessons. The lessons proved so successful that Thomas convinced Georgie’s instructor to move to Salem in order to continue working on a daily basis with Georgie, and arranged to have him live with him and his young family at his parents’ house on Essex St. This living arrangement also included allowing the young professor to use the enormous 3^rd floor attic for his “electrical” experiments. The professor was Alexander Graham Bell.[1]

Thomas and Charles saw great potential in Bell’s experiments involving single wire transmission of several telegraph messages with a device known as a harmonic telegraph. Thomas, by then a successful leather merchant, offered to finance the experiments and the creation of any devices and share in the profits, if any. “Alec” Bell lived with the family for three years while instructing Georgie and worked on his inventions. Finally, after being awakened several times in the wee hours of the night by Bell shouting “Come up! I’ve got it 100% better,” Thomas Sanders finally relocated Bell’s laboratory from his parents’ home on Essex St. to a room on 109 Court St. in Boston.[2] It was there on June 2, 1875 that Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson were first able to transmit sounds. After months spent refining the process and filing a patent, the following March 10^th the first telephone successfully transmitted Bell’s request “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.”[3]

Four years later, firmly believing in the telephone’s future role as an indispensable device for many applications, Charles worked diligently to obtain subscribers for a telephone exchange in Salem. This was a surprisingly difficult task. There were no telephone poles, so transmission wires were attached to roofs and the sides of buildings. Many people were opposed to the idea of wires on their houses, for fear of fires due to electrical storms. Of the original 79 subscribers, many of whom had to be convinced that the telephone would be useful to them and was worth having, only 21 were private residences. The rest comprised of Salem Hospital and most of the physicians, the courthouse, almshouse, all the hotels, and all six firehouses. Meat markets, grocers and coal men subscribed, but only two lawyers and one bank. The telephone subscription at a cost of $40 annually was considered a foolhardy investment by many.[4]

Finally, with 79 subscribers secured, Charles felt he had enough customers to warrant installation of a switchboard. An advertisement was published in the Salem Gazette on March 15, 1880 that read: “The Salem District Telephone Exchange is now open for business and will solicit subscribers for connection in all parts of the city.  Apply at Room 4, Northey Building, Corner of Essex and Washington Street.   C. Sanders, Manager”[5]

Charles Sanders and his brother Thomas were heavily invested in the new Bell Telephone Company. Thomas was invested financially, and Charles had staked his reputation on the success of this new device and was devoted to promoting it. Thomas asked Charles to buy some stock in the new company, and reassured him by saying “if you don’t make $100,000 on it, I’ll have the Salem Cadet Band come play in your garden. C. Bradley Sanders, Thomas’s 8 year old son, recalls looking out the window of Thomas Sanders’ mansion in Haverhill one day, to see a parade of wagons filled with musicians in uniform coming up the avenue toward the house. Thomas had won the bet, and courtesy of Charles, the Salem Cadet Band played late into the evening for the Sanders’ friends and neighbors.[6]

By the mid 1880s, Thomas and Charles, having reaped profits from their initial investments, chose to sell their interests in the fledgling American Bell Telephone Company. Whether they regretted this decision later in life is not known.

Long before becoming manager of the Salem Exchange of the fledgling American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Charles Sanders was known as a fearless and competitive horseman. Automobiles weren’t available until the early 1900s, and then were quite expensive. In Charles’ lifetime horses were the main mode of transportation, and as a result a subject of great public interest. Charles had a string of well bred horses that he would race on Lynn Shore Drive by carriage or sleigh, and he kept a diary in which he would note the time it took to travel from Salem to Haverhill to visit his brother, trying to beat his previous record.[7] After retiring from the Salem Telephone Exchange he devoted his time to acquiring and breeding trotting horses specifically for racing. One of these was Uhlan, a stunning black horse bought by Charles in 1907 for $2,500 when he was 3 years old. Uhlan was trained under Robert Proctor of the Readville Track. In 1909, he beat Hamburg Belle, the world record holder, and attracted the attend of C.K. Billings, a Chicago multi-millionaire, who purchased Uhlan for $35,000. A year later, Uhlan set a new world record of a mile in 1 minute, 58 seconds, capturing the nation’s attention with his exceptional good looks, easygoing nature, and lightning fast trot. His world record lasted for decades. Uhlan traveled to Europe and Russia, to be exhibited and admired by royalty and heads of state. He was retired in 1916.[8]

According to family lore and anecdotes, Charles had a fiery personality, a hot temper and a strong sense of competition, but was known to be fair in his treatment of others. He loved dogs, and when later in his professional career he was vice president of Salem Safe Deposit and Trust, two or three of his unruly dogs would accompany him to the Bank. Miss Helen LeDuc, an employee of the Bank in the early 1900s, said in the mornings you could tell when he was about to arrive by the sound of barking followed by women shrieking as they snatched their pet dogs out of danger. At the Bank, Charles’ ruffian dogs crouched under the table where people signed in to enter the Safe Deposit vault. When a depositor with a dog approached the table, there was more barking and shrieking followed by angry yells from Charles.[9]

Charles Sanders was a conspicuous figure around Salem driving his high bred carriage horses. When he wanted to exercise one of his green horses, he would often invite his son Dick’s wife, Anna, along for a somewhat scary ride through Harmony Grove Cemetery. “I used to pray we wouldn’t come upon a recent burial of any of his friends,” she said. “If we did, I had to sit in the buggy holding a twitchy colt while he got down and rearranged all the flowers to suit himself.”[10]  

Charles Sanders died at age 76 on November 12, 1918, after two years of failing health.

‍

Text and photo: Martha Baldwin Sanders, great granddaughter of Charles Sanders.

Sources Consulted:

[1] SalemNews, August 16, 2018, “Alexander Graham Bell and the North Shore.”

[2] Private collection, 1947, newspaper unknown, “He Remembers When Alexander Graham Bell Used His Attic for Telephone Experiments.”

[3] www.wired.com/2011/03/0310bell-invents-telephone-mr-watson-come-here/

[4] Private collection, undated, newspaper unknown, “1^st Salem Telephone Exchange Opened on April Fool’s Day, 1880.”

[5] “Salem, One of the World’s First Telephone Exchanges,” published by New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1955.

[6] Private collection, “He Remembers When Alexander Graham Bell Used His Attic for Telephone Experiments.”

[7] Private collection, family papers.

[8] Brooklyn Eagle, Tuesday, September 13, 1910.

[9] Private collection, family anecdotes compiled by Barbara Brett Sanders  “True Yanks.”

[10] Private collection, Anna H. Sanders, from “True Yanks.”

‍